Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"

Dr. John E. McLaughlin mclasutt at brigham.net
Mon Mar 13 16:45:58 UTC 2000


[Stanley Friesen wrote]

> Or the now-extinct Quagga.  (I think this unlikely, as there seems to be a
> linguistic tendency to keep the striped equines distinct from the plain
> one, but it is possible).

This is even more unlikely since the range of the quagga has always been
limited to the extreme part of southern Africa.  Most modern taxonomists
have reached a consensus that the quagga is simply the southernmost
subspecies of the Plains Zebra (Equus burchelli) which includes all the
zebras of East Africa except the Grevy's Zebra (Equus grevyi) of Ethiopia
and Somalia.  (There is a third zebra, the mountain zebra (Equus zebra),
that only occurs in southern Africa.)  Although the current edition of
Walker lists Equus quagga as a separate species, the text clearly indicates
that this is not the consensus opinion.  However, what is clear is that the
quagga's range never extended outside the southernmost part of Africa.
Grevy's zebra, however, probably extended as far north as Egypt until as
recently as 3500 BP.  The word 'quagga' itself is from Afrikaans which is
from Xhosa and probably ultimately from one of the Khoisan languages (since
the word starts with a click in Xhosa).

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

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